


Valentine

by Reading Redhead (readingredhead)



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Alternate Universe, Coffee, F/M, Hipsters, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-03
Updated: 2011-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:57:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readingredhead/pseuds/Reading%20Redhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dairine owns a cafe in New York's Lower East Side. Roshaun is a picky customer. (I swear, it's not as cracky as that sounds.)</p><p>[<a href="http://amplificathon.livejournal.com/1166251.html">podfic</a> by kalakyria]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valentine

**Author's Note:**

> I seriously don't know how this AU happened; I think I'm going to blame it on the coffee (by which I mean both the fact that I consume too much coffee, and my amusement at Roshaun's impressively reverent reaction to the first time he smells coffee in Wizard's Holiday).

Valentine’s Day fell on a Sunday that year. As she walked to the café that morning, Dairine’s boots crunched in the inch of snow that had dusted the ground overnight. She squinted against the street lamps to survey the sky: it was still dark, but she couldn’t see any clouds, and the forecast had been for a clear if cold day. She allowed herself to be cautiously pleased: business was usually good on days like these.

She got to Callahan’s at six o’clock and went through all the motions of opening: turning on the lights and the thermostat, taking chairs off of tables, checking the registers, and starting up the pastry oven. She was pulling on her apron (deep green, with her name and the Callahan’s logo embroidered over her heart) when Carmela, who ran the bakery end of things, came in. The hot pink streaks in her dark hair were new: last week they’d been turquoise. “Nice hair,” Dairine said. 

“It matches my shirt!” Carmela laughed, unbuttoning her coat to display an equally hot pink v-neck.

“Bet it goes great with the apron.”

Carmela raised an eyebrow at her business partner. “I still think the aprons are too Starbucks,” she said, nearly knocking into a chair and twisting into a half-pirouette to keep from overturning a table. “Besides,” she added, as she regained her balance and passed by Dairine on her way to the small kitchen, “it’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Which means lovesick teens and twenty-somethings will be buying cupcakes in droves,” Dairine shot back, “so you’d better get baking.”

“And  _you_  better remember to draw little hearts in the latte foam,” Carmela shot back.

Dairine rolled her eyes.

Carmela popped her head back around the kitchen door. “Maybe Mr. Sunday Crossword will like it,” she said, flashing a mischievous grin at Dairine before disappearing once more.

Dairine groaned and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. Callahan’s had received a few good write-ups since its January opening, and Dairine had already served a number of return customers: Andy was a third-year at NYU who spent his four-hour gap between Tuesday classes in an armchair with his large drip coffee and a stack of public policy textbooks; the Morettis had come on two consecutive weekends, ordering cappuccinos and treating their five-year-old daughter to a cupcake while her younger brother slumbered in his stroller.

But the strangest of her return customers was a well-dressed young man whose name she did not know. Dairine had initially suspected him of being some kind of upstart businessman, possibly of European extraction; his jeans were just a little too tight, his shoes a little too nice, his jacket a little too tailored and his thick yellow-blond hair just a little too long for him to fit any American stereotype. He’d come on his own a couple weeks after their opening, ordered a latte from one of the other baristas, and sat at the small table in the corner for an hour, reading the newspaper. In the bustle of customers that day, Dairine hadn’t even noticed him leave. But when there had been a lull in business, and she’d done a round of the room to clean and bus tables, she’d seen his copy of the  _New York Times_  sitting there, open to the crossword, which was completed—in pen—and bore an additional note beneath it in the same precise handwriting:

 _Too much foam in latte. Espresso slightly burnt. Train baristas, or clean espresso machine. Or both._

Dairine had shared the note with Carmela later, who laughed and said it was the most ridiculously passive-aggressive tactic ever and agreed that he couldn’t possibly be a New Yorker. Dairine pointed out Carmela would have been far more upset if the man had critiqued her pastries or cakes. Carmela responded that such a critique was obviously impossible, since her pastries and cakes were the finest on the island, and she dared anyone to assert otherwise.

Dairine had tried her best to forget about the mystery man—until he arrived the next Sunday, ordered a latte, and sat with his copy of the _New York Times_  at the exact same table as before. She’d been in the back doing a stock check when he ordered, but she asked John (who’d taken his order) and he said the guy had asked for another large latte, which John had made.

This time, Dairine saw him leave, once again leaving his paper on the table. Equal parts annoyed and curious, she made her way over to investigate. Again, she was met with a completed crossword and a note: 

 _Steam milk longer to create proper microfoam texture. Current technique inadequate._

It probably shouldn’t have been quite so satisfying to toss that newspaper in the garbage—or the one that had followed after that. If Mr. Sunday Crossword, as Carmela had started calling him, showed up again today, it would be his fourth Sunday in a row. Dairine had fantasized about confronting him and cutting that holier-than-thou attitude down to size—and if it weren’t for the fact that Dairine cared about this place, and had sunk most of her savings in the start-up capital, she might have gone through with it. As it was, she cared about the reviews they received with a fervor that Carmela called obsessive and Dairine called good business sense. She wasn’t going to risk ruining everything just to get back at one customer who couldn’t even critique her work to her face. They still didn’t have a single review below four stars, and Dairine aimed to keep it that way, even if it meant she was denied the satisfaction of dealing thoroughly with this particular customer.

*

Callahan’s was as busy for Valentine’s Day as Dairine had predicted, so she was working behind the bar alongside the other baristas when Mr. Sunday Crossword walked in. She shot glimpses at him out of the corner of her eye as he inched forward in the line, and maneuvered things so that she would be the one to take his order when he made his way to the front. 

“Good morning,” she said, putting on her best smile, “what can I get you?” This close, she could see that his eyes were a surprising shade of green.

“Large latte for here,” he said, focusing his gaze absently on a spot a few feet behind and above her head, “and a copy of the Times.”

“Something sweet for Valentine’s day?” Dairine asked, hopping to draw him out, or at least get him to look her in the eye. “We’ve got some great red velvet cupcakes—”

“No,” he said, “just the latte,” and when his eyes did meet hers, they expressed nothing beyond a sense of boredom.

Dairine raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, punched in his order, and said, “One large latte for here. Can I get your name?” 

“Roshaun,” he said.

“That’s a nice name,” she said, as she took his credit card and finished the sale. Definitely better than Mr. Sunday Crossword. “Is it Irish?”

“No.”

Other people might have responded to this man’s terseness by giving up. Under other circumstances, Dairine would have called him out. But the way things stood? Well, it was a good thing Dairine liked a challenge. She handed Roshaun his card and receipt, smiled a deliberate smile, and started making his coffee.

She measured the espresso grounds into the filter, tamped them with a practiced twist of her wrist, and clicked the filter into place on the espresso machine (which she  _had_  cleaned, thoroughly, just this morning). While she waited for the water temperature to rise, she poured milk into a steel pitcher and started steaming it, watching intently for it to develop that perfectly velvety texture. Slowly, the espresso machine started pouring out a thick dark double-shot into Roshaun’s mug, finishing just as Dairine saw the microfoam bubbles forming in the milk. She removed the steam wand, grabbed the mug in one hand and carefully poured the milk in, jiggling the pitcher back and forth to produce a brown-and-white heart in the latte foam. He might not appreciate the holiday cheer, but it couldn’t hurt to practice.

*

When Dairine clocked out about an hour later, Roshaun was still there, sipping his latte with meticulous precision. She disappeared into the back room, removed her barista’s apron, and hung it neatly on its peg, all the while thinking about this strange man who came like clockwork to drink coffee he’d had nothing but criticism for. Who was he, to spend his Valentine’s Day here alone—deliberately in view of so many coupled pairs, and deliberately standing out?

She took her purse and her coat from her locker and was already thinking happy thoughts about going home and bundling up on her couch with a good book when she heard the click of heels and looked up to see Carmela leaning against the doorframe.

“Shouldn’t you be up to your elbows in pink frosting or something?” Dairine asked

“Relax, I’m on break,” Carmela said. “Lacey’s manning the kitchen. You going home?”

Dairine had had Sunday afternoons off for as long as they’d been working here, and Carmela knew it. Dairine expected she knew where this was going. “Yep,” she said.

“He’s still out there.”

“Yep,” Dairine said again, even-toned. She slung her purse over her shoulder, and her coat over one arm. 

She was almost out of the break room before Carmela spoke again. “You know,” she said, “he might be unreasonably passive-aggressive, but Mr. Sunday Crossword looks a little lonely.”

*

A minute later, Dairine stood opposite Roshaun at his table. Callahan’s had filled up nicely, and the only empty chair in the whole place was the one across from him. “Is anyone sitting here?”

He regarded her strangely for a moment, then shook his head, a single curt slash of his chin. 

Dairine draped her coat over the back of her chair, sat down, and took a book out of her purse, followed by a glasses case. She put on her reading glasses, opened the book to its mark, and looked at the page. It was out of focus. She stared for a moment, trying to remember her place.

She heard the sounds of the café around her—small-talk, the clinking of cups and plates, the tap-tap-tap of some undergrad’s furious typing. Her book obscured Roshaun’s face, but she saw in her peripheral vision as a hand lifted the mug, heard the pause as he drink, the clink as he set it down again.

“This one,” he said, “is much better.”

*

The next Sunday, Roshaun’s discarded  _New York Times_  was open, not to the crossword, but to the food section. A small star had been drawn next to the title of an article that appeared in a small column halfway down the second page: “New Lower East Side Café Perfects the Latte.” At first Dairine was confused, but then she saw the byline—“Roshaun Nelaid”—and smiled.


End file.
